Challenging the theory that the new coronavirus came from nature and could not have been leaked from a Chinese laboratory, some scientists have called for an investigation into the role of Western scientific and medical journals, including Nature and The Lancet, during the global pandemic.
They allege that the editors of these influential journals refused to publish dozens of critical articles suggesting that the new coronavirus could have been artificially created in a laboratory and possibly leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan.
Nikolai Petrovsky, a professor in the School of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University in Australia, told the Voice of America, “The managers of these journals probably want to appease the Chinese Communist Party because a growing portion of their funding comes from China. China has made it clear that those journals it supports must adhere to its policy goals.”
He continued, “So many papers questioning the origin of the virus were quickly rejected by the editors of journals like Nature and The Lancet, and not even sent for consideration. This rejection without sending them for review is because the higher-ups at these journals make decisions primarily on political or other grounds, rather than on scientific grounds.”
The editors of Nature and The Lancet rejected the complaints, claiming that their selection and publication of submitted papers was dictated by their scientific merit rather than political views.
A World Health Organization-led panel earlier this year dismissed the theory of a laboratory leak as “highly improbable,” and the investigative team gave more support to the standard popular narrative that the new coronavirus most likely originated in a seafood market in Wuhan and was transmitted to humans from animals, possibly bats or pangolins. But the WHO investigation has been increasingly criticized by some prominent Western scientists, as well as by Western governments. They say Chinese authorities blocked a four-week visit by a WHO team to Wuhan last January, rendering the international investigation worthless.
Professor Petrovus is one of more than a dozen scientists who have questioned the theory that a virus of natural origin was passed on to humans. These scientists tried to point out the holes in the standard narrative that quickly developed, but their comments were met with coldness, rejection and hostility by editors of leading Western scientific journals.
Judgment Day
Another scientist, Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said there should be a “Judgment Day. In an email to the Voice of America, he said.
“The misrepresentation and misconduct by scientists and science journalists who establish and reinforce false narratives goes far beyond refusing to consider papers that challenge the false narrative.”
Ebright and other scientists charge that some articles that are not peer-reviewed are quickly published if they support the popular narrative narrative. Those articles, they add, then set the tone for mass media coverage.
Ebright said, “Beginning in January 2020 and continuing into early 2021, a small group of scientists and more science journalists, established and reinforced this false narrative that the scientific evidence supports the natural contagion theory, and also further reinforced another false narrative that this is what the scientific community forms a consensus on.”
But Magdalena Skipper, editor-in-chief of Nature, says that’s not the case. She told Voice of America that.
“I want to be clear that Nature has never rejected a paper on the basis that it doesn’t fit a particular narrative or general view. It certainly would not be under my supervision.”
She added in an email, “We make decisions based solely on whether studies meet our criteria for publication; they must be persuasive, first-hand scientific studies whose conclusions are based on sound evidence to support them; the studies are important topics in the field of science, and the conclusions reached are of interest to readers in different fields. We maintain complete independence. All editors consider submissions based solely on their scientific merit, and no topic is excluded because its conclusions may be controversial.”
U.S. investigation
Last month, President Joe Biden directed the U.S. intelligence community to investigate whether the new coronavirus may have been artificially created by a laboratory and leaked from a lab in China. Biden gave the intelligence agencies three months to submit their reports. The main focus of the investigation is the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research in China. There is growing skepticism that the new virus from bats, which ravaged the world and killed at least 4 million people, could have leaked from a lab. Beijing angrily denies the claim.
President Biden ordered the investigation after the U.S. intelligence community uncovered more details about the November 2019 illnesses of three researchers at the Wuhan Virus Laboratory. The onset of illness in these three individuals predated the earliest confirmed cases of the new coronavirus outbreak by several weeks. It was more than a month before China notified the World Health Organization of the discovery of a “case of pneumonia” of “unknown origin. According to the Wall Street Journal, which first publicly disclosed the intelligence report, the researchers were hospitalized with symptoms similar to those caused by either the new coronavirus or common respiratory illnesses.
British intelligence agencies, as well as security services in Western Europe, are assisting in this new U.S.-led investigation, according to officials on both sides of the Atlantic.
Communist authorities have denied any leaks from the Wuhan Institute of Virus Research, which conducts virus research and receives partial funding from the U.S. government. Last year, Communist Party propagandists accused the New Crown virus of coming from the U.S. military sports delegation that will participate in the military games in October 2019. They also promoted several other theories, though all were quickly dismissed by prominent virologists and epidemiologists.
Scientists who questioned the natural infection theory from the beginning included Petrovsky, Ebright and some from the so-called Paris Group. They drafted two open letters on the origin of the new coronavirus, arguing that it was time to investigate the role played by leading scientific journals. The main focus is on The Lancet and Nature, but other major journals have also been criticized, including Science, the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The pandemic has exposed how easily our scientific institutions, including our institutes, universities and scientific journals, are politicized and subject to undisclosed influence,” Petrovsky said. And while exerting undue influence on Western journals, China itself publishes hundreds of journals under its own direct control, providing easy access to publications and the temptation to get scientists to publish in them.”
Petrovsky also told Voice of America, “An investigation of this by Congress might be a good start, although this is also a broader international issue that should ultimately require an international effort to address these issues.”
Petrovsky said he and other scientists have encountered huge obstacles in publishing their papers that question the natural contagion theory. He said that if a paper is initially considered for acceptance on a very rare occasion, it is rejected when it is sent for consideration for its merits in a second stage.
Almost all of the scientific community, from which the reviewers were also selected, was indoctrinated by the misleading and heavily manipulated medical reviews in the early days of The Lancet and Nature journals,” he said. They argued that any questioning of the source of the virus should be seen as an attack from far-right conspiracy theorists.”
Magdalena Skibo is a British geneticist and the first female editor of the journal Nature in its 150-year history. She said the editorial decision process is strictly separate from “Springer Nature’s wider commercial interests. “Springer Nature is the German and British academic publisher that owns the journal Nature. “Springer Nature has dozens of collaboration and funding agreements with educational and government research institutions in China. So does Elsevier, the Netherlands-based publishing company specializing in science, technology and medicine and owner of The Lancet.
The Lancet also told VOA that neither political nor commercial considerations play any role in determining editorial policy.
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